External Adjustment

External Adjustment PDF Author: Maurice Obstfeld
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Balance of trade
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Book Description
"Gross stocks of foreign assets have increased rapidly relative to national outputs since 1990, and the short-run capital gains and losses on those assets can amount to significant fractions of GDP. These fluctuations in asset values render the national income and product account measure of the current account balance increasingly inadequate as a summary of the change in a country's net foreign assets. Nonetheless, unusually large current account imbalances, especially deficits, should remain high on policymakers' list of concerns, even for the richer and less credit-constrained countries. Extreme imbalances signal the need for large and perhaps abrupt real exchange rate changes in the future, changes that might have undesired political and financial consequences given the incompleteness of domestic and international asset markets. Furthermore, of the two sources of the change in net foreign assets -- the current account and the capital gain on the net foreign asset position -- the former is better understood and more amenable to policy influence. Systematic government attempts to manipulate international asset values in order to change the net foreign asset position could have a destabilizing effect on market expectations"--NBER website

External Adjustment

External Adjustment PDF Author: Maurice Obstfeld
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Balance of trade
Languages : en
Pages : 64

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Gross stocks of foreign assets have increased rapidly relative to national outputs since 1990, and the short-run capital gains and losses on those assets can amount to significant fractions of GDP. These fluctuations in asset values render the national income and product account measure of the current account balance increasingly inadequate as a summary of the change in a country's net foreign assets. Nonetheless, unusually large current account imbalances, especially deficits, should remain high on policymakers' list of concerns, even for the richer and less credit-constrained countries. Extreme imbalances signal the need for large and perhaps abrupt real exchange rate changes in the future, changes that might have undesired political and financial consequences given the incompleteness of domestic and international asset markets. Furthermore, of the two sources of the change in net foreign assets -- the current account and the capital gain on the net foreign asset position -- the former is better understood and more amenable to policy influence. Systematic government attempts to manipulate international asset values in order to change the net foreign asset position could have a destabilizing effect on market expectations"--NBER website

G7 Current Account Imbalances

G7 Current Account Imbalances PDF Author: Richard H. Clarida
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226107280
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 518

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Book Description
The current account deficit of the United States is more than six percent of its gross domestic product—an all-time high. And the rest of the world, including other G7 countries such as Japan and Germany, must collectively run current account surpluses to finance this deficit. How long can such unevenness between imports and exports be sustained, and what form might their eventual reconciliation take? Putting forth scenarios ranging from a gradual correction to a crash landing for the dollar, G7 Current Account Imbalances brings together economists from around the globe to consider the origins, status, and future of those disparities. An esteemed group of collaborators here examines the role of the bursting of the dot-com bubble, the history of previous episodes of current account adjustments, and the possibility of the Euro surpassing the dollar as the leading international reserve currency. Though there are areas of broad agreement—that the imbalances will ultimately decline and that currency revaluations will be part of the solution—many areas of contention remain regarding both the dangers of imbalances and the possible forms of adjustment. This volume will be of tremendous value to economists, politicians, and business leaders alike as they look to the future of the G7 economies.

The External Balance Assessment (EBA) Methodology

The External Balance Assessment (EBA) Methodology PDF Author: Mr.Steven Phillips
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1484346785
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 68

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Book Description
The External Balance Assessment (EBA) methodology has been developed by the IMF’s Research Department as a successor to the CGER methodology for assessing current accounts and exchange rates in a multilaterally consistent manner. Compared to other approaches, EBA emphasizes distinguishing between the positive empirical analysis and the normative assessment of current accounts and exchange rates, and highlights the roles of policies and policy distortions. This paper provides a comprehensive description and discussion of the 2013 version (“2.0”) of the EBA methodology, including areas for its further development.

Macroeconomics for Professionals

Macroeconomics for Professionals PDF Author: Leslie Lipschitz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108568467
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Understanding macroeconomic developments and policies in the twenty-first century is daunting: policy-makers face the combined challenges of supporting economic activity and employment, keeping inflation low and risks of financial crises at bay, and navigating the ever-tighter linkages of globalization. Many professionals face demands to evaluate the implications of developments and policies for their business, financial, or public policy decisions. Macroeconomics for Professionals provides a concise, rigorous, yet intuitive framework for assessing a country's macroeconomic outlook and policies. Drawing on years of experience at the International Monetary Fund, Leslie Lipschitz and Susan Schadler have created an operating manual for professional applied economists and all those required to evaluate economic analysis.

Balance of Payments Imbalances, by Alan Greenspan

Balance of Payments Imbalances, by Alan Greenspan PDF Author: International Monetary Fund
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 145195011X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 39

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Book Description
This paper focuses on the developing countries, which accounted for nearly half the value of those surpluses, were apparently unable to find sufficiently profitable investments at home that overcame market and political risk. The United States a decade ago likely could not have run up today’s near $800 billion annual deficit for the simple reason that we could not have attracted the foreign savings to finance it. In 1995, for example, total cross-border saving was less than $300 billion. The long-term updrift in this broader swath of unconsolidated deficits and mostly offsetting surpluses of economic entities has been persistent but gradual for decades, probably generations. However, the component of that broad set that captures only the net foreign financing of the imbalances of the individual US economic entities, our current account deficit, increased from negligible in the early 1990s to 6.2 percent of our GDP by 2006.

Global Imbalances and the Financial Crisis

Global Imbalances and the Financial Crisis PDF Author: Steven Vincent Dunaway
Publisher: Council on Foreign Relations
ISBN: 0876094280
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 56

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Book Description
Crafting stimulus packages and financial bailouts to address immediate problems has for many reasons been a priority for policymakers. In this Council Special Report, however, Steven Dunaway argues that policymakers must go beyond these steps and tackle one of the root causes of today's crisis: imbalances between savings and investment in major countries. The report analyzes the nature of these imbalances, which occur when some countries, such as the United States, run large current account (essentially trade) deficits while others, such as China, maintain large surpluses. Dunaway identifies three features of the international financial system that have allowed the imbalances to persist, features that involve both floating and managed exchange rates as well as the issuance of reserve assets. In particular, he notes that the United States' status as an issuer of such assets has enabled it to finance a current account deficit. The report then prescribes a variety of steps to address global imbalances. Beyond stimulus packages around the world, it urges measures to raise savings (principally government savings) in the United States, reform labor and product markets in Europe and Japan to increase competition and flexibility, and boost domestic consumption in China. Finally, the report advocates improving International Monetary Fund (IMF) surveillance of member states' economic policies by reducing the role of the Fund's executive board and depoliticizing the selection of its senior management.

A Global Perspective on External Positions

A Global Perspective on External Positions PDF Author: Philip R. Lane
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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Book Description
This paper highlights the increased dispersion in net external positions in recent years, particularly among industrial countries. It provides a simple accounting framework that disentangles the factors driving the accumulation of external assets and liabilities (such as trade imbalances, investment income flows, and capital gains) for major external creditors and debtors. It also examines the factors driving the foreign asset portfolio of international investors, with a special focus on the weight of U.S. liabilities in the rest of the world's stock of external assets. Finally, it relates the empirical evidence to the current debate about the roles of portfolio balance effects and exchange rate adjustment in shaping the external adjustment process.

Labor and Product Market Reforms and External Imbalances: Evidence from Advanced Economies

Labor and Product Market Reforms and External Imbalances: Evidence from Advanced Economies PDF Author: Mr.Romain A Duval
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1513570749
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 31

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Book Description
We explore the impact of major labor and product market reforms on current account dynamics using a new “narrative” database of major changes in employment protection for regular workers and product market regulation for non-manufacturing industries covering 26 advanced economies over the past four decades. Our main finding is that product market deregulation is associated with a weakening of the current account, while labor market deregulation is associated with an improvement. These effects are transitory and driven by both saving and investment responses. Labor and product market reforms both have a more positive impact on the current account balance when implemented under weak macroeconomic conditions. Our results are broadly consistent with predictions from recent DSGE models with endogenous producer entry and labor market frictions.

What Caused the Global Financial Crisis

What Caused the Global Financial Crisis PDF Author: Erlend Nier
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1455210722
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Book Description
This paper investigates empirically the drivers of financial imbalances ahead of the global financial crisis. Three factors may have contributed to the build-up of financial imbalances: (i) rising global imbalances (capital flows), (ii) monetary policy that might have been too loose, (iii) inadequate supervision and regulation. Panel data regressions are performed for OECD countries from 1999 to 2007, so as to shed light on the relative importance of these factors, as well as the extent to which these factors might have interacted in fuelling the build-up. We find that the build-up of financial imbalances was driven by capital inflows and an associated compression of the spread between long and short rates. The effect of capital inflows on the build-up is amplified where the supervisory and regulatory environment was relatively weak. We find that, by contrast, differences in monetary policy cannot account for differences across countries in the build-up of financial imbalances ahead of the crisis.

The Politics of Economic Adjustment

The Politics of Economic Adjustment PDF Author: Stephan Haggard
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691003948
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
This is a collection of essays offering comparative analysis of the divergent experiences of developing countries responding to economic crises by adopting macroeconomic stabilization and structural adjustment policies.